Diamond Microcrystallite Resistor

Michael D. Jaeger and Brage Golding

Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University

The picture is a color-enhanced scanning electron microscope image of an isolated micron-size diamond crystallite grown by chemical vapor deposition. The crystallite is viewed from the side and has four electrical contact wires running up to the top facet. The base of the crystallite is immersed in an insulating polymer to planarize the 3-dimensional crystallite profile so that the conformal gold wires (colored yellow) could be fabricated by electron beam lithography. The resistivity of single crystallites like this is studied to investigate electronic transport in polycrystalline films comprised of many diamond crystallites which have grown together.